This evening we’re going to a little farewell gathering for some friends who are leaving the island to go back home. This will definitely not be the last time we say goodbye to new friends here, but it is the first. And as I feel the loss of the great energy they bring to our social circle here and the gap their absence will leave behind – it’s getting me thinking about the nature of goodbyes.

In my adult life I’ve said the word “goodbye” a lot as we’ve moved around from place to place. I live far away from where I...

I feel like a bit of a mutt, nationality-wise. My passport and birthplace call me British, my upbringing and my heart say I’m South African. Born in one place, raised in another – and now raising my own family here, there and everywhere – sometimes I’m a bit fuzzy about my national identity, about where “home” is.

I’m fuzzy, that is, until the exact moment, once a year or so, I step off a 747 on to the tarmac at Cape Town International Airport. And then it all becomes startlingly clear.

I have just recently packed up my worldly possessions for the fourth time. My family and I are holed up in temporary accommodation while we wait for visas to come through allowing us to move on to a new country and a new life… There have been a couple of nasty surprises over the last few months – our visas were delayed, our home was let out before we could request to stay on longer, and our new (one bedroom!) apartment has no bath tub and no microwave – two items I would previously have considered relatively indispensable with two kids under...

About Catherine

Wife, mum, tea drinker, shoe lover, South African Brit who has just moved from Switzerland to the Bahamas. I write about life with my littles, travel, health, style, perfect cups of tea and other lovely things that bring sunshine to a life.